Source: Daily Worker, October 31, 1928
Transcription/Markup: Paul Saba
Copyleft: Internet
Archive(marxists.org) 2018. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons License.
The American financial oligarchy has made the best choice in having secured the nomination of Herbert Hoover as the presidential candidate presidential candidate for the republican party. If he is according elected president of the United States on November 6th of this year – and there is no doubt that he will – American imperialism will make a further step In the realization of its program of merging finance capital and the government apparatus. For Mr. Hoover is not only an obedient servant of capitalism, a strong man for the maintenance and furtherance of colonial aggression, but he himself is an expert financier whose interests are involved in Latin America, particularly Colombia and Mexico.
Hoover’s annual budget is estimated to be over $100,000. The meagre salary as secretary of commerce that he has been getting until recently hardly covered the expenses for the rent of his modest mansion. His services to the capitalist class brought a lucrative return and, furthermore, the experience in the investment of capital in foreign trade monopoly served him to change his position from a mere manager to a respectable investor, a financier of good abilities looking after his “future.”
According to “American Politics and Mexican Concession,” a bulletin issued by Jonathan Whickwire, Hoover is known to have been on the board of the General Petroleum Ltd. which merged in 1926 with the Standard Oil of New York through the Continental Mexican Petroleum Company. These combined interests control 7,600 acres of oil lands and 260 acres of water frontage at Tampico, Mexico.
Mr. Huston, vice chairman of the republican national committee, and Mr. Hoover’s pre-convention manager, is chairman of the Transcontinental Oil Company, a $52,000,000 concern and owns 50 per cent of the interests in Papatula Oil Company of Mexico with 2,000 acres on Vera Cruz field. The republican presidential candidate has also been, according to this bulletin, a director of the Santa Gertrudis Ltd., a $10,000,000 concern, and also of Camp Bird Ltd., a parent $7,000,000 concern. In gold and silver mining properties Hoover controlled and operated 600 acres in Hidalgo, 1,364 in Puebla and 733 acres in Zacatecas.
Here, Mr. Hoover, through his associates and particularly Mr. Huston, is concerned with the Transcontinental Oil Company, a $52,000,000 firm listing 1,787,000 acres of land. Theodore Jesse Hoover, the candidate’s brother, was a director of the Oroville Dredging Company Ltd., a $1,000,000 corporation. This company controls three gold mines and 22,000 acres in the Nechi River district, Antisquia, Colombia. (American Petroleum Concession in Colombia, map by Jonathan Whickwire).
The properties personally owned by Hoover and through his associates are not listed since 1920. It is quite difficult to trail his name in connection with other American interests in Latin America. Since his entrance into politics, Hoover has managed to have his name barred from corporation directories. But according to statisticians, no date on disposition of properties can be found, thus denoting his efforts of hiding his direct relations with the American imperialists.
The further penetration of capital in Latin America, the successful endeavor of complete monopoly of the oil, coal, rubber, coffee and other natural resources of these countries will be completed ably if Hoover will be the next president. Hoover, the imperialist, knows his game. He will do all in his power to continue Coolidge’s program of forceful intervention in other countries of Latin America as he did in Nicaragua. Hoover, the iron heel of imperialism, will execute the program of more colonial oppression by American imperialism. He will execute the plans for war preparation which this time will involve the millions of workers and peasants of Latin America.